


Without Us

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bi-Bro, Brother Feels, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Comfort Sex, Conflict Resolution, Death Wish, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Gen, Het, One Night Stands, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:11:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1355245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suffering from each other’s company, each struggling in his own way with the rift between them, Sam and Dean find solace in female company. Neither gets the woman he expects, and each gets something he sorely needs to bring to his brother.</p><p>Written for the <a> Bi-Bro Challenge </a> at The Bunker on Live Journal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Us

Dean had had about enough stiff silence for one week—or one lifetime. “I’m gonna hit the bar,” he said, the moment he’d dropped his duffle on the bed at their new motel room. He turned abruptly back to the door, only to find Sam already in the doorway, jacket in hand.

Sam looked awkward for a moment before he iced over, like he always did these days. But the ice stopped before it reached his eyes. “I was thinking of getting a drink myself,” he said, and Dean hated himself for the tiny thrill of hope the gentleness of his tone stirred in him.

Dean nodded, looking down and jingling the Impala keys. “Saw a place up the road that looked all right,” he grunted, and followed Sam out, pulling the door closed behind them. He brutally shoved down his lifting spirits when Sam got in the car with him. When had it come to this, that even this small bit of not-hostility made him feel like wagging like an eager puppy? Damned if he’d act like it. He pretended indifference while he drove to the bar.

“I’m gonna try to get some play,” he said abruptly as they walked in, and winced at how dismissive he sounded, like Sam was in his way, when what he’d really meant to say was that he’d go home with a girl if he could… if it wouldn’t bother Sam or make him feel abandoned. Not much he could do once the words were out.

But Sam smiled, albeit a little bitterly. “Try? When’s it ever a challenge?”

Dean couldn’t think of a reply, so he tried to smile, or even laugh, and wondered why he always choked on it these days. Again, he was more relieved than he wanted to be when Sam sat with him at the table he picked.

Dean scoped the bar quickly, looking first for any danger, and secondly at his prospects for feminine company. There were several, but one pair of ladies caught his eye immediately. They were sitting together, but turned outward from their table, smiling and looking around much the way he was, their attitudes displaying “buy me a drink, sailor?” as clearly as he ever saw it. In fact, he saw one guy walk up and make an offer, and cursed his timing, but the dude got rejected, so Dean figured he still had a chance.

He knew which one he’d want. Yes indeed, she fit the bill nicely. Curvy, almost plump, with curly blonde tresses bouncing expressively around her shoulders. The curls weren’t the only things bouncing, either, as her low-cut blouse revealed. Her raucous laugh reached Dean even over the noise of the bar, and cinched it for him: here was a nice, light-hearted girl who knew how to have a good time—just what he needed. He watched her surreptitiously, waiting for his opening, while Sam went to the bar to get them drinks.

Her friend wasn’t bad either, Dean reflected. She was an olive-skinned brunette, darkly pretty with an elegance about her, taller and slimmer than her friend and much less boisterous. She had almost a bit of a librarian thing going on. She probably wouldn’t give Dean the time of day. But there was a smolder in her dark eyes, a secretive smile when her friend made an apparently-snide comment, that made Dean think she could have a good time, too, in her way. He recognized, after a moment, what it was about her that caught his attention: she was exactly Sam’s type.

Maybe he’d try to talk Sam into going for it—he could be wingman, if Sam wasn’t too prude (or proud) to go there. Maybe that would put his little brother in a better mood. Dean wasn’t sure there had been anyone since Amelia, and he never even figured out exactly what had happened there, but he knew Sam was still smarting from it. 

Brooding over this, he almost missed his window with the curvy blonde—while he’d been looking at the brunette, the blonde had gotten up and headed to the bar. He watched her make her way across the room, waiting just long enough that it wouldn’t look like he was following her, planning a smooth interruption of her drink order with his offer to buy. He stood up when the moment came—and blinked. The brunette was standing directly in front of him. He’d missed _her_ leaving the table.

“Hi,” she said, in an appealingly warm voice. She didn’t quite meet Dean’s eye as she gave him a sweet, shy smile. “Umm, is this seat taken?” 

Dean might have had someone different in mind, but he was an opportunist at heart. Too bad for Sammy, maybe, but he probably wouldn’t have gone for it anyway. “It is now,” he said, smiling roguishly and pulling out a chair for her.

~* * *~

It was a surprisingly short time before he found himself at Kent’s place. He must’ve looked a little askance when she’d told him her name, because she gave a wry smile and said, “Don’t worry; I’m really female and always was.” She went on to explain that, as the youngest of four girls in her family, she had been named after her dad, when it became clear to her parents that they weren’t going to get the son they’d hoped for.

It was strange, Dean reflected as he took off Kent’s shirt. He’d really enjoyed talking to her, drawing her out, engaging in the chase. She was shy and awkward. So how was it that she’d picked _him_ up, and they were getting naked less than an hour later?

Well, he’d never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. How did she manage to be so beguilingly demure while they were ripping each other’s clothes off? She seemed eager, utterly willing, even skillful, while still making him feel… in charge. So sexy.

The sex was fantastic. He didn’t realize how much he’d needed it, how long it had been, until she drew the need out of him, little by little, simultaneously taking her own pleasure. It lasted a good long time, and was shockingly intimate. She held his face between her hands, locking his gaze with hers as he came. She kept gazing into his eyes as the aftershocks shook him, stroking his face and saying his name softly.

He drew her close afterwards, ostensibly romantically, but it was really so she would stop looking into his eyes like that. He worried that he’d gotten in too deep, that she’d have some kind of expectations after this. But maybe it was his own expectations, or hopes, he should be worried about. He wished, so hard that it burned, that he lived a different sort of life.

He wasn’t sure how she got him started talking about Sam. She never pushed anything. She didn’t ask a lot of probing questions. It just all… came out, and she was kind, and sympathetic, and he had to say it to someone. He just had to. If Bobby had been alive… hell, even Kevin… he flinched away from the name in his thoughts. It didn’t matter who was dead. It mattered who was here, and listening.

He talked about a lot of stuff before he told her what was happening now, and his pain about it. He told her about what it had been like when they were kids, how much they’d both lost and sacrificed, but how they’d always been in it together, foxhole buddies, until now. “I don’t really get why that’s changed,” he told her.

He told her his secret fear: that Sam was still resentful of being taken away from his life at Stanford, from that possible future, and that was what he couldn’t forgive. And maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he was right to hate Dean now, for taking away his life when Dean thought he was giving it back.

He didn’t mention fallen angels or the gates of Hell, of course. He made it sound like Sam had been terminally ill, and he’d gone against his wishes and kept him alive instead of pulling the plug, and then Sam had had a miraculous recovery.

Which was sort of the truth, from Dean’s point of view.

Kent was quiet for a while after Dean finished talking. She was stroking his chest thoughtfully, curled against his side. Finally she said, “You want to protect him. Keep him safe.”

“More than anything. Since I was four years old.”

“Maybe Sam doesn’t want to be safe.”

“’Course he does. He wanted a safe life—that’s what he said when I picked him up from Stanford—and I couldn’t give him that.”

“That was… eight years ago?”

“Yeah, thereabouts.”

“A lot has happened since then, it sounds like. Don’t you think some things have probably changed? That he might want something different now?”

“No, he just wants to ditch me, like he always has. Even if he has to die to do it.” _Or I do. Whichever comes first._

She couldn’t have heard his unspoken thought, but she acted like she did. “When he said he wouldn’t make the same choice, Dean. That obviously hurt you a lot. But I think he meant it in a different way than you think. I think he meant he cares enough not to take your choice away from you. You’re the big brother, you always made the choices. But Sam wants to stand on his own. He wants to grow up, and you can’t let him.”

“Jesus,” Dean muttered, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. “Now you sound like him.”

She caressed him, pulling him closer, and Dean couldn’t bring himself to turn away from the comfort. He turned his head into her shoulder and let her stroke his hair.

“Well,” she said after a moment. “I know this is hard, and what Sam has to say might be harsh. But you’re gonna have to let him say it. I think that’s why he won’t really talk to you right now—because he knows you don’t want him to say what he’s got to say.”

Dean scowled furiously. He started to say that Sam could say whatever he wanted, but then he was hit by an intense intuition that she was right. He knew Sam. Sam _used_ to try to talk to him, and Dean had hated it. He just wanted Sam to shut up and stop trying to _change_ things. Now that things needed to change—now that they couldn’t go on like this anymore—Sam had given up. He no longer had anything to say, and that was what was killing Dean. He’d give anything for a chick-flick moment right about now.

“You and Sam might not ever want the same things. But you should at least _know_ what he wants. And what you want, Dean. Do you even know what that is?” 

She said it very gently, where Sam would probably throw it in his face. But it was exactly the kind of thing Sam would say. 

And what _did_ he want? He wanted Sam alive and safe. He wanted Abaddon and Gadreel dead. That’s what he would say if Sam asked him. He had an intense sense of déjà vu. How many times had he been here? There was always an immediate answer to that question, and it was different, yet always the same: he wanted to find their father. He wanted to kill the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He wanted to save Sam from Lucifer. He wanted to stop the Apocalypse. He wanted to get Sam’s soul back. And the list went on. But beyond it? Beyond whatever danger was threatening Sam and the world, whatever penance he had to pay, outside of Sam, what did _he_ want?

He had no answer. None at all.

“It may be that you can’t stay together,” Kent continued, her voice soft in the dark next to him. “You might need to live separate lives for a while, or forever. But it won’t mean you can’t be brothers. Despite how bad everything looks right now, I don’t think anything could ever change that.”

Dean could only hope that she was right.

~* * *~

Sam said nothing as they drove to the bar. Dean wasn’t talking either, but Sam felt like Dean was shouting at him, like he had been since Gadreel had been kicked out of his head. He always _wanted_ something from Sam, and would never say what it was, if he even knew. Sam felt like he was deaf from the shouting, like he had heard so much, so many recriminations and unfounded reassurances and demands that he be OK, everything was OK, _why aren’t you OK Sammy,_ that he just couldn’t take in anymore. He was saturated with Dean’s words, spoken and unspoken, and there was no room for his own.

He felt like a ghost in his own life, haunting Dean, haunting himself for a vengeance that he didn’t even understand. His own words tasted horribly bitter on his tongue, but once spoken, they would not be unsaid. The bitterness was his own truth, and he couldn’t blame Dean for not wanting to see it. He didn’t want to, either, but it was there, always in the corner of his eye or the back of his mind, in the driver’s seat of the Impala and just out of earshot.

He’d thought he wanted to get away from Dean when he decided to go for a drink tonight, but he found he was intensely relieved that Dean came with him. He could feel that Dean was relieved, too. He could feel brotherhood there, not just offered but shoved frantically at him, and he wanted to take it. He just couldn’t. It felt like dishonor to take it. It felt like a betrayal of Dean, the very fact that Sam lived, that Dean had to live with the wrongness of his choice: to stop the trials, to take away Sam’s will, the ultimate violation that just felt like always to Sam, felt like he’d been born to it. He’d tried to die from it, to save Dean. To stop this horrible avalanche they were both buried under with all that he had left to give: his death. His gift, returned unopened, thrown back in his face. 

Brothers. Sam’s own words burned him as they walked into the bar together. He’d told Dean he didn’t know if they could be brothers. What he’d really meant was, he didn’t know if he could _be._ He’d tried so hard. He’d tried fighting. He’d tried victory at great cost. He’d succeeded. Then he’d failed. He’d surrendered. He’d fought again. He’d given up. He’d tried falling in love, losing his heart again. He’d tried dying, so many times he’d lost count. He’d been brought back to life. Now he was trying to live again, but it was a losing battle. What Dean asked of him he could not deliver.

His death wasn’t enough. Dean wanted his life. But not as Sam wanted to live it. Wanted to, but no longer could. _I lost,_ he wanted to say, as his lips formed a joke about Dean’s way with the ladies. _I lost, Dean. I’m sorry._

He couldn’t say it, so he went to the bar to get Dean a drink instead. It twisted in him, in a distant, mostly forgotten way. He could feed Dean alcohol to dull the pain. It would harm his body, but it might make him forget the harm to his soul, the weight Sam had laid upon it. The weight he wanted, more than anything in this world, to lift from him.

There was a long wait at the bar, and Sam didn’t feel like trying to get the bartender’s attention, so he just stood patiently, casing the bar and carefully noting the exits, the body language of all the patrons, looking for any sign that anyone was here for nefarious reasons. No one seemed to be, unless desperation to get laid could be called nefarious. He smiled slightly, as the bartender finally came and took his order for two shots of whiskey, to note that it wasn’t just guys (including Dean) who were on that page. He’d noticed a pair of women, too, obviously trawling for men. For whatever reason, it lifted Sam’s heart a little. He felt the first stirring of interest in female company he’d felt in… he couldn’t recall how long. One of the pair was a rather pretty, dark-haired woman he wouldn’t mind getting to know, if he could separate her from her brash friend. Maybe he shouldn’t go there. No sense getting entangled, but—

“Well, hello,” drawled a feminine voice at his elbow. “Is one of those for me?” 

It was the blonde he’d just called brash. She gestured at the pair of shots the bartender had just handed him, and was now looking him up and down with a frankly lewd, appreciative smile. 

“Uh, hi... um…” He didn’t want to say the drink wasn’t for her, but she shortly relieved him of the awkwardness.

“Thanks, Tower,” she said, taking one of the shot glasses from him, perching on a bar stool, and downing the whiskey in a gulp. “Whew! Not bad. Put hair on your chest,” she said, eyeing his, which was in fact at eye level to her, with another grin. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Sam—” He started to say more, something about bringing a drink to his brother, but she cut him off.

“Carly,” she said, smiling up at him, and laid her hand on his arm, caressingly. “Hey, Sam.”

He could’ve excused himself, turned away from her, gone back to Dean or their motel room or his own tangled thoughts. But the warmth, where she touched him and in her smile, in her flirty posture as she leaned closer to him on her barstool, giving him a very pleasant view down her shirt… the appeal was so intense, Sam couldn’t resist. He felt like he was freezing to death, and she was inviting him in out of the cold.

They sat in a booth in the corner, and Carly chatted to him so glibly, he barely had to respond. He tried to remember how to smile encouragingly at her, how to react when she touched him. When did anyone ever touch him these days, except to try to kill him? But his body remembered what to do when she kicked off her shoe and rubbed his leg with her foot under the table, when she leaned across the table, giving him that pleasant view again, and ran her hand up his arm, smiling into his eyes. She was prettier than he’d thought—beneath her brashness was an open sweetness, well represented by her soft, oddly vulnerable gray eyes and her curving, very full lips. Suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to taste them, and seeing no reason why he shouldn’t, he leaned forward diffidently to kiss her, giving her plenty of time to dodge it if she chose. She didn’t; instead she made him think it had been her idea in the first place. She chuckled throatily as their lips met, leaning into it, and laced her charmingly-small fingers through his hair.

God, she was so little. He hadn’t noticed it before, because she seemed really sturdy, but what if he hurt her? She didn’t give him much time to think about it, though. His head spun as she came over to his side of the booth, and soon enough she was in his lap, kissing him with so much flattering enthusiasm that it warmed the deep chill inside him. He clung to her, desperate to thaw.

“My place is just a few blocks away,” she breathed in his ear, and he followed her mutely, his will and his pain, his dark thoughts and his brokenness, all subsumed and subdued by the moment, by desire.

She took control and he let her. He let go of his training, of his instincts all but one. He got in her car with her without a thought of danger, that she could be a demon or reaper or shifter or any monster, any at all, finding that door he’d left cracked to his death. It didn’t matter now. He hardly heeded where she took him or noticed anything about her place when they got there, except where the door to the bedroom was as she steered him there. His mind was consumed by the intricacies of taking off her clothes, each button on her jeans and hook on her bra, by the sweet point of her shoulder filling his mouth and her breasts spilling over his hands, drinking her heated gasps and urging her hands onto him.

She ravaged him. He lay down beneath it, gave himself over to her. He’d thought her small, but she was strong—stronger in this than he. He came once, but the burning ecstasy that shook him to his core was not enough, was one small flame against the melting ice inside him, and he took more, buried his head between her legs and sunk himself into the heat of her pleasure. She shouted his name and wrestled him onto his back again, took him again with feral urgency, and he melted, melted, until he was liquid running through her fingers, draining away to nothing.

After their cries fell to silence, she eased forward from where she straddled him, flopping gracelessly across his chest, her tangled curls filling his mouth. He breathed them, breathed her scent as their mingled sweat cooled him, for a long time.

Finally she gave a long, languorous sigh and rolled half off him, curling against his side. “That… was amazing,” she said. “Sam.” She said his name like an affirmation, like she was giving him an award.

He laughed. He hardly knew why, but was deeply eased to see that he remembered how. She joined him, giggling softly and merrily as she pressed hard, sweet kisses all over his face. He almost wept for the joy of it, that there was joy left in this world.

“I knew you’d show me a good time, my human supernova.”

He blinked at the odd compliment. “Uh… thanks…”

“My solar superman. You don’t know that song? I’ll play it for you.” She wriggled out of bed, and Sam enjoyed the show as she searched through their scattered clothes to find her smart phone in her jeans pocket, placed it in its deck and played the song. She crawled back on top of him; he flushed when she sang into his ear that he fucked like a volcano, but he clumsily returned her compliments, which turned to kisses, which turned into a third round he’d never have guessed was in him.

They both drowsed afterward as her phone went on to play an eclectic mix of music, but Sam woke up to laugh heartily when it treated them to a theme song from… an 80s sitcom? “Is that… the Family Ties theme?” 

She nodded, trilling, “Sha la la laaaa…” as the song ended. She had a nice voice, unself-conscious and clear. They laughed some more as she cuddled him close.

“Carly… thanks,” Sam said. “I mean… I just didn’t know I could still feel like that; I can’t tell you what you’ve given me."

She laughed. “Has it been that long?” she teased him, tracing his anti-possession tattoo with her fingertips. “You sure seemed to remember how everything works just fine.”

“It’s not just the sex. But thanks for the amazing sex, too,” he said, surprised by his own light-hearted tone, that he had actually made a joke.

She tossed her head in that way that he loved, giving herself fully over to laughter, as she did to everything. “My pleasure, sir,” she said. “Quite literally. So. You ever gonna tell me anything about yourself?”

“We talked kind of a lot before, I thought.”

“No, _I_ talked. _You_ didn’t. I’m sure you thought I didn’t notice,” she said with mock-indignity, “but I did. And now that I got you in bed like I wanted, you’re gonna do some talking, mister.” She squeezed his cheeks, mashing his lips together in a talking motion, and he laughed again.

But melancholy was stealing back over him. He knew he couldn’t stave it off for much longer, but how he wanted to. How he wanted to be the guy that just light-heartedly took a girl like Carly home, had a good time with her, maybe called her a few days later and repeated the experience… but he couldn’t. He couldn’t entangle himself with her, and she would never know why. She would never know that taking Sam home might well have endangered her life.

“There’s… not much to tell. I… have to leave town tomorrow. My brother…”

“Well,” she interrupted, “start there. And don’t worry, Sam. This was great, but it was a one-night only event; I’m cool with that.” 

She grinned, and as easily as that his fears were dissolving. “This brother of yours. Kent caught a whiff of _him_ the moment you guys walked in. Nice, or so I would’ve said if I hadn’t spotted _you_ first.” She leered at him, trailing her hand down his body. “Soooooo much of a good thing,” she cooed, and giggled when he blushed again. “Anyway,” she continued. “Kent’s not a man-eater like me, but she sure knows what she wants when she sees it. Like your brother. So. If you don’t want to talk about you, tell me about him.”

Why should he not? She didn’t seem to mind the melancholy. She still made jokes, but when he couldn’t laugh, she just cuddled him closer. He hardly knew what he said, but it felt like lancing a boil. The pain was only matched by the relief of release. Dean filled him, choking him, like bindweed wrapped all around his life, but he didn’t want to uproot it. He wanted to uproot himself.

Gradually she stopped making jokes, or talking at all. She did not interrupt him, and as he spoke, she held him tighter and tighter. “Oh, Sam,” she finally murmured into a long silence.

“I just… can’t. I’m trying, but I can’t,” he whispered brokenly.

“Can’t what?”

“Can’t… live for him. Maybe can’t live at all. I… it’s like I never learned how. Like I’ve been faking it for thirty years. I thought… you know. I thought I was done.”

“Well,” she said, sitting up, and he opened his eyes at the briskness in her voice. “Tonight showed me pretty clearly that you’re not. You _definitely_ want to live, Sam Winchester.” 

He blinked. He’d told her his real name. He remembered it now, like something outside himself, something someone else would do.

“I do?” he said stupidly, and she laughed again.

“Yes. You do. Like with me. You let it all go and did what you wanted. You’re gonna have to do that with the rest of your life. You know… just have a good _time._ I know you can’t fake it, like Dean wants you to. But he sounds like a guy who just wants, and needs, some _lightness._ And maybe you do, too. You guys have both been through a lot. You almost dying, Sam? I know that was hard on you, and hard that he didn’t do what you asked him to do. But it was hard on him, too. And because he made the choice for you, you’re _here._ And if you want to choose for yourself? Well, choose something. Tell Dean what it is, and then do it. He can’t give you choice, Sam. He took it away, yeah. And I’d be pissed about that, too. But _you’re_ the one who has to take it back. _Take_ what you want. I did, tonight, and look what it got me.”

“I can’t tell him what I want. He can’t hear it. He just wants me to be grateful, and to keep traveling with him, and not to whine, and to do what it takes to keep him, no matter what, like he did for me. And I want him around, Carly. I just… want him to have what he needs, and for it not to all depend on me, for him not to have to protect me anymore. I... he wants me around because he feels like he has to. I wanted to set him free of that.” 

He did not say out loud that dying had seemed the only way to make that happen. “I wanted him… to have a nice, normal life. I tried to do that for him, a couple of years ago, but it all fell apart in the worst way possible, and… and I don’t think I can ever give him that again.”

“Why would you ever think you could?” she said. “You can’t. You can only give it to yourself.”

Though he knew there were things Carly couldn’t possibly know about why it wasn’t possible—why the life he wanted was out of reach for both of them—he could still feel, thrumming through him, the rightness of what she said. 

It had been so long since he’d had any heart to give Dean, since he could find any words to say. He knew he had to find them now.

~* * *~

In the morning, he woke to her stumbling around the room, cursing under her breath. “Sorry, baby,” she said, as she wriggled hastily into the jeans she’d been wearing the night before. “I’ve gotta run. My sister needs a last-minute babysitter, and then I have to work this afternoon. Can you lock up when you leave, if my roommate is already gone?”

Sam was surprised how much his heart contracted as he watched her fasten her bra and riffle a drawer for a T-shirt. “Sure. Of course,” he said, wondering what it would be like to live a life where you could leave a stranger in your bed and sail off without a care.

She bounced onto the bed and kissed him. “Thanks. Mmm…” she sighed, lingering over a second kiss. “Dreamboat. I really do hate to cut this short,” and the regret was genuine in her tone, “but here.” She handed him a card. “If you’re still in town this evening, call me; maybe we can have a longer goodbye. Or if not…” She kissed him again, and Sam was surprised by the emotion in it, the deep sweetness he longed for more of. She lingered against his lips for a long moment, then said, “If not, visit again anytime. Good luck with Dean.” She stopped smiling for a moment, then hugged him tight, gave him a last peck, and hurried out the door.

He looked around the room bemusedly as he gathered his clothes, marveling that he’d noticed not a single detail about it the night before. Her décor made him laugh the same way she had. Her giant, pink stuffed unicorn and lacy throw pillows unabashedly kept company with a huge, wall-sized Ramones poster—his heart cracked a little as he was reminded of Pamela—a stack of 80s heavy metal CDs, a leopard-print leotard draped over a chair, a denim-heavy pile of laundry strewn over a good third of the room, and a large purple vibrator on her bedside table. He grinned, unable to help feeling a little pleased with himself that she hadn’t needed _that_ last night. He felt about a thousand pounds lighter as he left that goofy little room.

He started, reaching for the reassurance of the knife-handle in his jacket, as he saw that there was someone in the living room.

“Hi,” the person said, then, “Oh,” as she apparently recognized him. It was Kent, the girl Carly had come to the bar with last night and talked about later. Sam hadn’t realized she was also the roommate. “It’s Sam, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, awkwardly shaking her extended hand as she glanced toward the door of Carly’s bedroom.

“Carly already gone?” she asked.

“Yeah. Said something about babysitting. Uh, I’ll… just show myself out,” he said, wondering when the last time was he’d had a “walk of shame” like this.

“Oh, have some coffee—your ride’s already here, after all. Dean’s in the shower.”

How could Sam keep forgetting these details? He was so off his game. Carly had as much as told him Dean had gone home with Kent, but it was still so weird that Dean was here… he took Kent up on her offer of coffee, but the awkwardness was mercifully short-lived. Dean emerged very soon and kissed Kent goodbye at the foot of the stairs—it was a neat little two-story townhome, with one bedroom on each floor. Kent waved at Sam and retreated upstairs, leaving the brothers to each other.

Sam felt… different. Dean _looked_ different. There was a softness behind his eyes that Sam hadn’t seen in so long, he hardly recognized it. When Dean just stood for a long, sober moment, looking at him, something broke open in Sam. He wanted his _brother_. He wanted fireworks and superhero costumes and initials carved in the door of the Impala, a hand up from the dirt and a dressing down when he missed his shot, a virus on his laptop from a porn site, an off-color joke and a drink and some laughter.

“Hey,” said Dean finally.

“Hey,” said Sam.

“So, umm… have a good time?”

“Great. You?”

“Really great.”

“Hey, Dean,” Sam said suddenly, and felt his heart lurch as Dean looked up vulnerably. “Can we… you know, take a day off? Maybe catch a movie or something? It’s a long drive back to the Bunker…” He stammered to a stop, awkwardly.

“Yeah,” said Dean quickly. “Yeah, that sounds… great.”

They walked out together, and as they got in the Impala, Dean said abruptly “And then it would be great if we could… talk. I really need to talk to you, Sam.” He cleared his throat, and fussed over starting the car as if it took all his concentration.

Sam gradually recognized the shock of feeling that went through him as hope. “Yeah,” he said quietly around the lump in his throat. “Yeah, you too.”

~The End~


End file.
